Is August Too Soon?

Out of the heat haze of summer emerges Doctor Who - ready to elevate the nation’s mood after various sporting disappointments – exciting stuff! But is it too soon?

As announced by The Guardian this Wednesday Steven Moffat will be attending the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival (which takes place between 23-25 August) where he’ll be chairing a masterclass on Sherlock with Mark Gatiss, and hosting an exclusive preview screening of the first episode of Series 7.

Itis basically an inversion of the broadcast schedule of Series 6. Last year, Let’s Kill Hitler made its bow at the same festival on 26th August and aired on BBC 1 the following day. So in all likelihood Doctor Who will be airing on 25th August or, at the latest, 1st September.

With Moffat promising eight episodes in 2013 it is likely that we’ll get five episodes – concluding with the departure of the Ponds – then the Christmas special where the lovely Jenna Louise-Coleman will step aboard the TARDIS for the remainder of the series.

How many episodes and in what format they will be remains to be seen but what’s obvious is that Doctor Who will dominate our television screens for a huge chunk of 2013!

However while we’ll be getting more beyond those eight episodes this run up to Christmas will only take us to the beginning of October at the most – meaning we’ll be waiting a further three months before Doctor Who returns to our screens for his annual festive jaunt.

The result is while we will be seeing even more of the Doctor in the next year it won’t be a continuous run of episodes this side of Christmas – or even after the holiday period.

So is this new air date too soon? Or should we just be grateful for the sheer amount of new episodes coming our way for the 50th Anniversary year?

Everyone has a favourite Doctor and mine - just for his honesty, his fairness and his ability to not notice the Master's awful, awful disguises/anagrams (Sir Gilles Estram!?!) - has to be the Fifth Doctor, Peter Davison. The stories didn’t serve him as well as his acting served those stories.